


Time And Death And Story And It

by HarveyMcScorpius



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Abstract, Entropy, Progressing World, Sadness, Time - Freeform, spiritual sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 05:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13710849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyMcScorpius/pseuds/HarveyMcScorpius
Summary: No story is immortal.





	Time And Death And Story And It

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me after I wrote "In Your Angelic, Angry Arms", also in this archive, and a thought struck me in the days after I published it on Fanfiction.net, a really depressing one. No matter how lovely and powerful and impossibly beautiful the events after Elisa and this creature meet are, within the Shape of Water universe eventually they will fade from memory, as if they'd never happened. Dmitri and Strickland are dead, Elisa and the creature are below the waves forevermore, and Giles and Zelda are two aging people in a world where life moves faster every day. They won't last forever. Time moves on.  
> This more or less takes place after "In Your Angelic, Angry Arms", so I would suggest giving that a read first. Prepare for a downer!
> 
> -HarveyMcScorpius

I. Giles

The apartment is empty now. The art is gone, the faded old couch with its forgotten etymology is gone, and so too is the battered old television that gave a man who loved the same sex so much nostalgia. The cats have moved on. They live across the hall now, with a group of people that do not know the story their master was part of, who do not have that special spark in them of having been part of _it_. They live outside now, hunting mice and birds in a grey jungle. Some do not live at all, and their husks feed those same mice and birds their cohorts prey upon. The man is gone, and he has taken his knowledge of _it_ with him. In his stead, some other man will live, with different art, different animals, a better couch and a new television. Perhaps this new man will have cats, or maybe dogs. It is likely he will not love other men. All of these new factors can never again have that rare combination that smelled so deeply of _it_. Neither will this new man, for without that fated blending, how can he know that _it_ ever happened?

The story fades from the apartment, gone forevermore.

* * *

 

II. Dmitri

The laboratory is empty now. The tools are gone, and the water that filled tank after tank has gone with them. The smoke that plumed the ceiling and walls in grey feathers is gone. No more does it hiss. The scientists have moved on. They go home to their wives now, the aeon-old object of their fascination having taken flight as well. One will never see his home. Nor will he ever see the laboratory so open with all the things that have left it. Along with the light of his eyes and the good of his heart Death takes his knowledge of _it._ Death hoards these things, for such a perfect story that this latest meal was part of must be protected. But, in time, even Death will forget _it_ , as all things do. In the place of the scientist, another will come. He will study different things. Perhaps he will lie to different people for different reasons, perhaps he will not lie at all. But he will never lie or study or care as his predecessor did. The price of this deviation is knowledge of _it_. The second scientist surrenders ever learning the story the first was part of.

But, this capitulation does not hurt him. He has never known _it_ to begin with.

The story fades from the laboratory, gone forevermore.

* * *

 

III. Strickland

The office is empty now. The candies are gone, the cameras set in the wall silent and dim. No longer does the clicking of a typewriter or of pain pills on teeth fill the room. One of these realities is brought about simply enough. The secretary has gone home. Now that _it_ has vanished from the earth and all who knew _it_ are gone, there is nothing for her to type. The other actuality arose from _it_. He, the colonel, had a great, titanic part to play in _it_ , the most important, most critical role of all the players in all the story. He is the catalyst. Destiny deemed him worthy to play his part into his grave, for _it_ to be as _it_ should. In time, a different colonel will pace this office, put his shoes on this desk. If fate has a heart (it does not, or _it_ would still be remembered), this new colonel will be an improvement on the old. He will not shout or hit or lust. But, we can never know what comes next. Perhaps the next colonel will make the first look like Christ himself. Time is random and jagged. Time is an impatient lover. It marches onward, with or without _it_.

The story fades from the office, gone forevermore.

* * *

 

IV. Zelda

The house is empty now. The armchair is gone. The titillating waves of scent and taste are gone. They have left, uprooted and moved so far away that they reach no nostrils. The stress of knowing what _it_ was, of being realistic and mundane enough to know what part she'd played in the story, banished the one who'd made them from the house. When she takes her mouth-watering sensory input, and the armchair that had been the throne of her demagogue for such a long millennia, she also takes the attrition. The fights, the envy and hatred and worn hands. Perhaps then, the death of _it,_ of that story, was a good thing? Perhaps the downfall of _it_ made a better world for one of its players. But where the bubbles of grease and crackling oil have been transplanted, so has the trench warfare. The house had come to know so well, and bitterly laments their loss. In time, even these familiar things would no longer reek of _it._ The hurt has not been stitched, it has been numbed. Soon even the house will forget that hurt, as it forgets _it_. It will welcome new tenants, with new hurts and new smells and tangs. These hurts will drug it, as these flavors will intoxicate it in the memory of players, of cast members in that story. But they will be fleeting, and shorter, and less vivid, each time. These new tenants have no knowledge of it, no connection. Their substances are counterfeit. They are not _it_.

The story fades from the house, gone forevermore.

* * *

 

V. Elisa

The apartment is empty now. The signs are gone. The bathtub is dry, like the cracked puffy eyes of someone who cries. The timer is silent, never again to sound its guns, not for pleasure or routine. The red heels are empty, bright and shiny, tear-streaked for their newness. The woman who so brightly employed these things is gone as well. Her absence is the bloodiest hole, the widest chasm. She was the soul of _it_. It was she who gave _it_ life, and with her fading from the world so did _it_. She is the final damning and the first. In her place, a different woman will rise. She is so alien, so terribly unwelcome in the space where _it_ was born. She is unable to mutate into a facet of _it_. The story will reject her even in death. Even _it_ must bow to time. She will triumph in the end. Where signs are so desperately sought after, words will be. The bathtub will fill. Gradually time will regard her in higher fashion than the woman who came before her, who had no words. The world will bend and follow suit. Perhaps she will be outgoing, perhaps she will cower before the undeniability of others. Perhaps she will harden her heart to the masses outside, so opposite of her predecessor. Time forgets the woman who came before, who birthed _it_ , who began that perfect story that Death itself lusts for.

The story fades from the apartment, gone forevermore.

* * *

 

VI. The Shape Of Water

The dock is empty now. The rain is gone. The friendly divets and pits in the concrete have been paved. The surface is unknowable, unremembered, a lying husband. That is because the child of _it_ , the begotten spawn of the story, the bond _it_ forged, has left this place. The space they dwell in is a million times the senior of the dock. While the jungle above it grows, the dock is left to shrink, to shrivel and burn into dust. Perhaps they have forgotten it in its ruin. Perhaps they yearn like starving lepers to return but cannot reach back to that moment, that grain of temporal sand. That grain contains _it_ , the highlight and climax and eventual entropic end of _it._ They suppose this is why the story dies. They cannot find _it_. Now that the world has forgotten them and all of those other parts to play in the story are replaced, the world is equally cut off from _it_. They are the last. _It_ birthed them, birthed their love, and now they are the only ones that hold the code to recreate it within them. After them, no more of _it_. No more story. Gradually, as time lengthens and discombobulates them with their love, they forget the world too. Time's reach is slowed down here, and the land where they live is trapped in a cone of stasis. It is a lulling rhythm, and a calming one too, to walk the same places for eternity. There will be no new spawn here, no new love or bond. The world forgets _it_ but bears _it_ no malice. To replace this finish to the story is an insult.

As the jungles grow, and music fades, and the planet shrinks, and tyrants fall, and young boys die, and people hate, and _it_ stays only with them, only with them . . .

The story fades from the world, gone forevermore.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed my work! See you next time!


End file.
